Ethnically Diverse Units (4/16/06)

[Rabbit, White]

The Persians belong to the Indo-Aryan people that originally came from North Asian Steppes. They separated into three groups and moved into the South East (India) South (Iran) and West (Germany).

Even until today the basic structure of these languages, despite of changes during these centuries are similar. This is why the scientist calls these three groups Indo-Aryans that share the same roots.

Arabic language and culture for example is a Semitic one and has nothing in common with Indo-Aryans. The latter didn't know even a Camel or Burka, so why take it into consideration for Persians? (according to the comments above).

If this ethnically diverse Settlers Mod should be realistic then the Persian settlers from Cyrus the Great should not come with Camels and Burka look.

Well see, I was completely ignorant to this. I think what I'm going to do is give Arabia their own look as I have a clear idea of how I want them to look, and the rest of the Civs in the area (Egypt, Persia and maybe Greece) will get a generic mediterranean look, at least for now. In any case, I'll be handling the easier groups first, so there is plenty of time to figure out how to do all those guys in the middle .

I was thinking that, when you eventually get to doing Indian units, the Fast Worker might be a good thing to use. For that matter, the regular Worker's cloth hat looks Middle-Eastern-ish enough that you might want to consider using it as the head model for Middle Eastern units.

Yep, that's what I was thinking too.

 

[Houman]

Thanks Rabbit! This idea is great!

Houman

 

[Spartan117]

what about changing some of the european looking units from earlier ages...
macemen,archer, longbowmen, pikemen, knight, axemean, spearmen...etc

maybe change some of these units to look non european... samurai knights, samurai longbowmen, or have a more general eastern asian look to the units instead of having to design for secific civs...
and native american look and african look

as aztec,inca, china etc the macemen or etc units should not look european...

 

[Rabbit, White]

what about changing some of the european looking units from earlier ages...
macemen,archer, longbowmen, pikemen, knight, axemean, spearmen...etc

maybe change some of these units to look non european... samurai knights, samurai longbowmen, or have a more general eastern asian look to the units instead of having to design for secific civs...
and native american look and african look

as aztec,inca, china etc the macemen or etc units should not look european...

That's far in the future as I'm still working on settlers and scouts but that shouldn't stop you from finding such units on forums here and using them, there are plenty of skins and unit mods that turn them more civ-specific.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Hey guys, I just wanted to see what you thought of this. It's the Asian settler

It's still not quite done, I tried making a donkey out of the horse but it didn't go, so I'll just put some bags on it and be done with it. I'm also not quite sure what to do with the kids, other just slightly changing the tone of their clothes. Giving them also hats seems like an overkill.

Also, things are going way slower than I had hoped, I want to also do the arabian settler and at least the warriors for asian and arabian styles before I post the update, and I think it might take me till the end of the week to do that.

 

[Sevo]

Hey guys, I just wanted to see what you thought of this. It's the Asian settler

Awesome. Great idea on the hats--undeniably southeast asian in appearance. I've released my 2.9z (well, it's on the way in the next 24 hours or so); it's the final release for communal debugging before I call it stable "3.0". The asian settlers will definitely be included in the final, but no sweat if it takes a while. I know all too well how long a seemingly simple project can take.

I can't really see anything to add to the kids, either, but like I said, they look fantastic (I mean, consider that the vanilla game has 4 greek figures for every civ...this is leagues better.)

I may need to borrow that hat for a leaderhead...

 

[The Great Apple]

The kids and the female settler do look a bit out of place, althogh a tone change on the clothes might do the trick.

 

[seZereth]

That's far in the future as I'm still working on settlers and scouts but that shouldn't stop you from finding such units on forums here and using them, there are plenty of skins and unit mods that turn them more civ-specific.

perhaps i should have called them Chinese and Japanese Units instead of CATHAY and NIPPON....
Well, whatever...
And i still think this is the chokuno Shield

The asians look good, just make the cloth of women and children look similar to the male ones.

Btw.. how far are you with the oxes ? could need anything related to them with the cathanese war chariot

 

[Rabbit, White]

Btw.. how far are you with the oxes ? could need anything related to them with the cathanese war chariot

No oxes sorry, no cows or bulls either, no bizons no nothing. At least unless I actually make them from scratch which is not likely. My plan was to use the cow resource graphic and add stuff to it, like horns and whatever. But when added to units the cow doesn't animate (something that I actually knew already but forgot in all the excitememnt ). I tried making a donkey out of the horse by changing bone proportions but they didn't stick, probably 'cause of animations. So, unless someone makes new animals with all the right animations I'll have to do with only horses and camels.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

The 2 "children" just dont work for me, they look too much like shrunkin adults (which they are). A childs head is much larger in proportion to an adults (esentialy head size is equal past about 10 years of age). The limbs are also very scrawny looking. I would drop them but If your realy set on having children in the Settler groups then I recomend reskining the child that comes with the normal settler rather then shrinking adult models as that will give proper proportions.

 

[Rabbit, White]

The 2 "children" just dont work for me, they look too much like shrunkin adults (which they are). A childs head is much larger in proportion to an adults (esentialy head size is equal past about 10 years of age). The limbs are also very scrawny looking. I would drop them but If your realy set on having children in the Settler groups then I recomend reskining the child that comes with the normal settler rather then shrinking adult models as that will give proper proportions.

These are in fact not shrunken adults, but the vanilla child settler model, so any complaints about head size should be directed to Firaxis. I have however, modified them to be a bit different 'cause I didn't like them being completely identical. Here is an updated preview shot of asian settler, warrior and scout.



I'm fairly happy with these. As you can see I made the kids different a bit, and I adjusted their, and the female's textures to fit more with the male's. It still doesn't match it perfectly but it seems ok to me and I really didn't want to spend another half an hour adjusting hues and shades on these textures. As I said in the past, I encourage people to create their own textures for these as my skills in that area are limited (especially when it comes to fabric and organic materials).

The idea behind the warrior and the scout is that these are the same folks as the settlers that just picked up weapons to defend themselves, which is of course how it was historically.

In fact, these Asian units are pretty much done - about 99%. All I want to do is change the scout's formation so he stands by the horse. Unless of course there are suggestions for more changes . I am going to post these together with the arabian settler so until then it'll be easier for me to change things.

 

[Mayan Raptor]

I don't want to turn this thread into an argument over such a contentious issue such as race, and such a discussion would probably fit more appropriately into the Off-Topic section, but I have to take issue with Redking's contesting my points.

This level of misinformation deserves rebuttal, lest more people fall into its lockstep.

Ancient, "pharoanic" Eqypt was polyglot.

I actually agree; I over-stereotyped when I described ancient Egyptians as "elongated Africans". That said, most ancient Egyptian art I have seen suggest elongated (Somali/Ethiopian-like) northeast African morphology; some would consider these black.

Characterizing ancient eqyptians as "sudanic" or "black" is an unsupported claim, popularized by a few pseudo-scholars and modern African-American pop culture.

I never described Egyptians as "Sudanic", where did you get this from? I can assure you that my comments and opinions had received no influence from either Afro-American pop culture or folks like Martin Bernal or C.A. Diop.

I didn't describe ancient Egyptians as definitely and undeniably black, I said that by some standards, you could consider them black. People have different concepts of blackness.

the singularly Semitic Coptic language that pre-existed the Arab expansion

Coptic does not belong to the Semitic branch.

As far as remnant pre-desertification populations are concerned, keep in mind that Africa, as a likely divergence point for the human genome, harbored a host of "races", more than any pre-modern continent, and not just a monolithic "black" or "congoid" population.

What races do you mean? How do you define blackness?

Furthermore, regardless the skin-tone of the earliest city-state denizens (which I don't believe anyone can confidently declare), the subsequent dynasties pulled in denizens from among both the neighboring lighter skinned peoples of southern Europe, southwest Asia, and the North African coast, and the darker skinned people of the Upper Nile and the Sahal.

The research I have seen suggests southern ("upper") Egyptians (from whom Egyptian civilization originated) had closer relationships to tropical/sun-Saharan Africans than to European or Middle Eastern populations. There exists a possibility that northern Egypt may have differed significantly, but I have not seen a lot of research on this subject.

Ancient Egypt certainly received its immigrants just like other nations, but with the possible exception of the Hyskos, these immigrations did not reach the level of what Egypt has experienced since the Late Period.

When I visit the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I see original works that depict a multitude of skin hues - exactly as you would expect from a civilization at geographical crossroads. Again, credible sources depict a polyglot civilization, regardless what opinions you've received from your friend or from any Michael Jackson video.

You do realize that the African-American community comes in many different hues as well.

Rarely in my experience have I encountered hues in men lighter than Halle Berry's skin (women sometimes appear yellow or pale in older art, but later art depicts women brown like men). I usually see medium to dark browns. That does suggest variation among Egyptians, but nothing to the extent seen in modern Egypt. Michael Jackson's casting decisions had no influence on me whatsoever.

BTW, RedKing, how do you define "black"? That word means different things to different people.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Ok guys, let's not hijack this thread. If you want to discuss this further please do it through PMs.

 

[Mayan Raptor]

Ok guys, let's not hijack this thread. If you want to discuss this further please do it through PMs.

Thank you, I do not like big debates myself.

BTW, I like your Asian units. Keep up the excellent work!

 

[GeoModder]

Not bad... they look like warrior monks.

 

[khmerballa]

hey rabbit can u put me on ur msn i want to learn more about creating units

 

[Rabbit, White]

Updated EDU to version 1.2, first post at the bottom.

Not bad... they look like warrior monks.

Thanks, that's what I was going for.

@khmerballa07: I don't use any IM messengers *gasp*, and especially not MSN. Just PM me any questions you have. BTW, I just answered your PM , check your inbox.

 

[The Great Apple]

The warriors do look rather funky.

In the SS you posted it seem to me the scout is a bit far away from it's horse. Doesn't really look like they're together.

 

[yellowhorse]

hey rabbit, white these are really incredible looking. I especially like the fact that the Native American settlers look navtive and not white. Maybe you can add travois to the dogs and/or the horse. Again these are really great, keep up the good work.

 

[Rabbit, White]

The warriors do look rather funky.

In the SS you posted it seem to me the scout is a bit far away from it's horse. Doesn't really look like they're together.

Yeah, I know about the horse. Thing is, what happened when it was position closer, was that when the unit went into fortify the horse would position itself in such a way as to appear to put his head on the guy's shoulder. Which is cute and all but doesn't look good In any case I'm going to tweak this in the future, but for now I just needed to release this so I can move on to other stuff.

@yellowhorse: Thank you What's a travois?